Posted
by
kdawson
on Sunday March 15, 2009 @07:14AM
from the mommy-track dept.

hessian notes a Cornell survey, published in the Psychological Bulletin, of 35 years of sociological studies that concludes that women tend to choose non-math-intensive fields for their careers not because they lack mathematical ability, but because they want flexibility to raise children or prefer less math-intensive fields of science. "'A major reason explaining why women are underrepresented not only in math-intensive fields but also in senior leadership positions in most fields is that many women choose to have children, and the timing of child rearing coincides with the most demanding periods of their career, such as trying to get tenure or working exorbitant hours to get promoted,' said lead author Stephen J. Ceci... The authors concluded that hormonal, brain, and other biological sex differences were not primary factors in explaining why women were underrepresented in science careers, and that studies on social and cultural effects were inconsistent and inconclusive. They also reported that although 'institutional barriers and discrimination exist, these influences still cannot explain why women are not entering or staying in STEM careers,' said Ceci."

... for on average a lot less pay, I think that's the biggest problem. Why pay a north american a decent middle class wage when you can farm science, technology and engineering careers to lower wage countries?

In my own research, I was able to find many examples of women having babies when it was definitely not good for the man, for the society, or even for the woman.

When exactly is this true ? America has on average 2.1 children/woman, this is just barely enough (ie. more would be preferable).

In europe birthrates are so low that they are on track to eradicate European presence in Europe before 2150 (and make Europeans a minority in Europe by 2050).

Are you contending such a thing would be good for either Europe or Europeans ? We need more babies, not less. Much, much more. Most places in Europe would be well served by a doubling or tripling of the number of native babie

First why on Earth do you think we need to increase the world's population? It won't be long now before we hit 7 billion people on this rock.

Second, you are a racist. To begin with I'd want to see citation to your statistics about Europe. Further, assuming your numbers are correct, I fail to see the problem unless you believe there is something wrong with non Europeans.

As a Merkin, I dread the day when the immigrants realise they don't need to speak English any more. Even more, I fear my Redneck fellows who'll probably start some whitepanther subversion and bring down the People's wrath on my ethnic minority.

Further, assuming your numbers are correct, I fail to see the problem unless you believe there is something wrong with non Europeans.

Below, you call out a sibling poster for raising a straw man, and yet here you do exactly the same thing. Europe is home to an incredible diversity in culture, with many ancient and unique small towns/villages which will disappear without increased birth rates. Immigrant populations can't completely maintain the culture of the destination even if they want to, which by observation they very seldom do.

So when the GP post said

Most places in Europe would be well served by a doubling or tripling of the number of native babies.

and you countered with

Second, you are a racist.

I have no choice but to paraphrase your own response:

I fail to see the problem unless you believe there is something wrong with Europeans.

Race is coincidental. The fact of the matter is that the more educated you are the less likely you are to have children. This matters, because the more educated the parents, the less the child costs to raise to the society as a whole. For the general welfare of our society, we'd be better off if different people were having children.

Wrong. The cost to a professional couple to raise children is huge, because of its affect on their careers. It simply isn't possible to raise children yourself in a proper way and have jobs at the same time. And most middle-class people don't make enough money to hire nannies, due to the high labor costs in this society (plus, would you want certain low-class people raising your kids, and teaching them stupid things like fandom of monster trucks or whatever?).

3. You act under the assumption that population growth/shrinkage rates are constant. This is far from the truth. We will likely see birth rates climb after a population drop due to increased availability of land.

It's not a population drop. It's a population displacement by immigrants from Asia and Africa.

If the less successful, and therefore cheaper, societies were able to do science work well, they wouldn't be less successful, would they?

What has science to do with economics? Countries like Russia, China, and India have had remarkable scientific achievements, but have been mired down by their inefficient socialist economies. What they truly need to become successful is training in clerical business jobs, they need to learn how to keep accounting books and inventories. Rocket science they already know.

The first step would be to understand why women have babies.

I'm not sure, but I'd be willing to bet that having ovaries and wombs has a lot to do with this.

You misspelled "rampant institutionalized corruption at all levels of government".

Which is a consequence of an economic system where the profit motive has been officially eliminated. Steal $1000 and you got that much for yourself, the whole country lost $1000 and your own share of that loss is $1000 divided by the country population.

The same works for capitalist systems too, of course. In a big corporation where no one has a majority share, decisions are often made by directors who have a bigger interest in

So, and I am honestly curious, while I disagree somewhat with your views, why are the above countries far worse off than America if both their socialist* governments and our capitalist** government are both flawed and lack profit motive?

To me, it seems foolhardy to blame a country's faults on its economic system. While there are certainly problems caused by them, I believe that problems are caused more by social issues rather than economic issues. Holding large portions of the population back due to long-he

When the British ruled India, they put a system in place that empowered many Indians in government to say "no" and very few if any to say "yes." They couldn't have Indian people with much power, but they were fine with Indian people screening their calls, so to speak. When the British left, the system remained, and so if you want to get something done, you have to get past a lot of people to reach the person who is empowered. This means bribes.

A good question... my own opinion on the matter is because that's what women are designed to do - procreate, we can backwards rationalize it all we want, but the primary purpose of life is survive and procreate. I think the process is mostly unconscious and instinctive, I've been doing a lot of reading in the cognitive sciences and how they see that most thought is unconscious, most thought is below your awareness... about 98%. So it would not be a surprise that people then backwards rationalize their actions (i.e. I wanted kids for x,y, z). Truth be told people have kids for companionship/economic reasons and (the hope) of old age security I think, that has always been the 'traditional' view imho.

I've thought about this more as I've had to take care of my own grandmother who's very old, she wouldn't have anyone to take care of her if she didn't have her kids and grandkids. I can only imagine what it must be like to be a woman with no kids who is not financially secure and is getting old... we have to remember that for most of history poverty was a significant fact of life.

People have kids just because 'thats what everyone else is doing'. When I asked my own mother why she had kids, she said 'thats just what people did back then'. Personally I think most people don't really think about it, they do it out of habit or instinct.

Truth be told people have kids for companionship/economic reasons and (the hope) of old age security I think, that has always been the 'traditional' view imho.

I'm guessing you don't have kids? Truth is, despite all the complaining about diapers and sleepless nights and moody teenagers, its overall on average fun, both the initial procreation for a couple minutes (obviously) and the next couple decades of playing and reminiscing about your own youth, etc. Most adults are really just big kids inside and find the kids are an excellent excuse for their own goals of running around in the park and building legos and building tree houses and digging in sandboxes and riding bikes and playing aports and computer and video games. Yeah the wii is for the kids. Sure I'm only pretending to enjoy an afternoon at the waterpark or chuck e cheese, it's all about the kids. Whatever.

Add to it a society where its widely believed that only a creepy pedo molester kidnapper gang member homeless terrorist adult could possibly want to go to a playground UNLESS THEY HAVE KIDS WITH THEM, that turns the kids into a fashion accessory for the parents to have fun.

Or is it that having a family is usually ends up more time-consuming for a woman because women are expected to be the primary care-givers?

Ding ding! We have a winner!

Even though our society supposedly treats men and women the same, it really doesn't. Raising children still generally falls on the woman's shoulders, whether or not she has a man around to help out. If there is one, he usually sits on the couch watching sports while the woman cooks meals, changes diapers, etc. If she's really lucky, he'll actually hold a regular job and bring home a paycheck.

Actually, from what I've heard from people with experience outsourcing that it is indeed social factors that make offshoring not worth it. Your average Indian tech is just as smart as your average American tech, and a hell of a lot more motivated. The problem is, he tells his boss "It's nearly done, we just have a few bugs to iron out" and the boss passes on a message of "Yes, sir, it is all very exceedingly good and ready for production straight away!". He has to - if he doesn't he gets fired and one of the hundreds waiting in line takes his place.

In the same way, when outsourcing to China, problems aren't reported because doing so means you lose face, and/or are seen as less loyal to your company.

That said, I don't think that you can say China has a "lack of growth", up until last year they were lightyears ahead of anywhere else in terms of economic growth and they're still chugging forward while everyone else starts sliding backwards. They're rapidly making the transition from ripping off existing tech to being the innovators in their own right.

I'm one semester away from a BS in computer science, and I've worked in groups with a lot of people from India and China, mostly graduate students, over the last year or so. I'm not concerned for my future.

I don't mean any disrespect to any of them, in fact in most cases I like working with them and hanging out with them. Their work ethic is fantastic, but in some ways that's part of the problem. Both cultures put a very high emphasis on working hard, but it seems their educational systems place little value on creative problem solving. The Chinese (PRC) education system in particular seems designed to squash any bit of creativity that its students may have had.

I've become convinced that the reason America has been on top is our peculiar form of laziness. We're always looking for a better, smarter, and most of all easier way to do things, and that is precisely where innovation comes from. From what I've seen of Chinese and Indians, they're so concerned with working hard and doing things the "proper" way, that if they ever even notice the places where their processes could be improved, they would immediately discount the thought because that's not how they were told to do things.

A note about Japan: They've always excelled at integrating foreign ideas. Most of what we think of as Japanese traditional things were in fact imported from China and/or Korea many centuries ago.

I've become convinced that the reason America has been on top is our peculiar form of laziness. We're always looking for a better, smarter, and most of all easier way to do things, and that is precisely where innovation comes from.

In fact, here you're echoing a chap called Larry Wall, I think you may have heard of him. From the second edition of Programming Perl (sourced from his wiki page [wikipedia.org]:

The Three Virtues of a Programmer:1. Laziness - The quality that makes you go to great effort to reduce overall energy expenditure. It makes you write labor-saving programs that other people will find useful, and document what you wrote so you don't have to answer so many questions about it. Hence, the first great virtue of a programmer. Also hence, this book. See also impatience and hubris.

2. Impatience - The anger you feel when the computer is being lazy. This makes you write programs that don't just react to your needs, but actually anticipate them. Or at least pretend to. Hence, the second great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and hubris.

3. Hubris - Excessive pride, the sort of thing Zeus zaps you for. Also the quality that makes you write (and maintain) programs that other people won't want to say bad things about. Hence, the third great virtue of a programmer. See also laziness and impatience.

These qualities, while beneficial to the tech industry, are somewhat at odds with the traditional mindset in some more diligent cultures.:)

the drivers for men in the field are the same as the drivers for women

No way.

Men, especially from about age 15 to 25, are genetically programmed to do things that may impress women. It is this drive that produces Nobel prizes, dictators, fire eaters, and football players.

Look, we can even measure brain structure differences. Think that affects nothing?

To imply that the STEM inequality is a bad thing is to judge women by male standards. Life isn't all about getting published, famous, or powerful. Other things are valuable in life, especially if you are not male. There is nothing wrong with having different priorities in life. To judge women by male standards is to devalue female standards, and thus women.

I still don't understand why it's so hard to combine child rearing with a career though. One of the above posters might have hit on it with his suggestion of extending paternity leave. There's, after all, plenty of young doctorate students out there with kids, so why should it be so much harder for a woman?

But perhaps all of that is not because of some innate difference between men and women but rather a sort of perversion of those old role patterns, where women tend to take up more and more of the roles that used to be man-only but men are not keeping in taking up some of the roles that used to be a wife's responsibilities. There's plenty of blame to go around here, as those men you're talking about don't seem to notice their wife is having to work so much harder but those women also seem to implicitly assum

Not only that, but women have more of the innate ability to regulate and juggle all the things necessary for keeping a kid (or two, or three) fed, occupied, out of trouble, at school or sports practice or wherever, as well as the tons of other things she's got to do to keep the home life and kids' extracurricular activities going.

Unfortunately the facts don't back up that maternal superiority complex. Statistics are clear, if it's a choice between being raised by a father or raised by a mother - kids are b

Re:Men and Woman are different..... News film at 11. Well, at least it's becoming okay again to point out what is incredibly obvious to everyone, except feminists with an axe to grind.

I don't really see how that follows. The article and summary say:

The authors concluded that hormonal, brain, and other biological sex differences were not primary factors in explaining why women were underrepresented in science careers,

But women have to stay home with kids, right? Well, this gets us to a more balanced conclusion: increase paternity leave and/or make it compulsory, and the effects of one sex happening to be the one manufacturing kids will be greatly mitigated. In other words, the mostly arbitary decision that women have to stay home with the kids is the greatest problem (women don't have to be at home 24/7 to provide breast milk, either.) If both parents take the hit, the system will have to choose between adapting and just throwing away talent.

I think the grandparent post is sexist. I'm a man and I'm very good with children, because I happen to be empathic. I can do just as good a job with 0-8 year olds as any woman, and better than some women who hate children (yes they do exist). PLUS it's good to have balance; it's good to have children spend a year with mom, and then another year with dad, and back again to mom, and so on. It provides balance.

We could start early, with after-school and summer programs for boys only. We could offer special college scholarships for men. We could have college admissions quotas to ensure that classes won't be mostly women.

From the "I thought feminism meant female equality with males" file and the interesting part was the bottom 'recommendation':

"The authors recommended that universities and companies create options for women with math talents who want to pursue math-intensive careers. These could include deferred start-up of tenure-track positions and part-time work that segues to full-time tenure-track work for women who are raising children, and courtesy appointments for women unable to work full time but who would benefit from use of university resources (e-mail, library resources, grant support) to continue their research from home."

Ah, so when feminists talk about 'equality' what they really mean is, "we want special treatment so that we get equal outcomes rather than equal opportunity based on the same starting point". Silly me, and to think that I thought feminism was all about equality with males in regards to the same starting point and a meritocratic system where skills and knowledge are the basis of advancement forward rather than the old boys network.

People wonder why I given feminists as much credibility has hearing Saudi Arabia preach about human rights, tolerance and respect.

Silly me, and to think that I thought feminism was all about equality with males

It was, but it's following a common pattern of reform movements. Back when the movement started, the issue was obtaining equality before the law. That's been achieved, so the reasonable people have moved on to other pursuits, leaving the dregs behind. It's similar to the way that the leadership of the civil rights movement degenerated from MLK to the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

Feminism isn't being hypocritical here so much as its being incompetent. Not that that makes a big difference in the results. The solution, at least from a feminist perspective, would be to get equality in gender roles instead of trying to monopolize the nurturing role as well as expand into the provider role.

That is, if feminism is serious about this it needs to accept that it's a good thing for a man to provide the primary child care, get child support, etc. This isn't very popular among feminists let alone the mainstream.

Something has to give but most women that I know won't budge on this issue. At this point I'd say resistance to change comes more from women than men even with all the Mr. Mom jokes

Why is it a good thing? Is it bad for a woman to work? What about get an education? If she doesn't work why does she need to be educated?
You haven't articulated your argument fully.

I was referring to the fact that its so one-sided. If a woman quits or takes a leave of absence to care for her children she's a good mother. If a man does it he's a 'couch slug'. Yes that's sexist but it does reflect the mainstream opinion more closely in my experience

Most feminists that I know do not differ in this preconception. That is, they're about as rigid and resistant to change as the conservatives are in this matter.

As a male in trying to start a career in the hard sciences I have to say that there is little or no leeway given to those trying to have kids, regardless of their gender. I find this incredibly frustrating because I do want to have kids before I am 40 (i.e. have a tenured position) because it is healthier and safer for both my wife and child.
This was something that was NOT the case when my Profs. were in my situation because women were assumed to be homemakers. This tells you two things: 1) that by and large professors in some of the hard sciences (math intensive in particular) are generally older (>50) while they were hired when they were in the 20-30s. 2) That the full magnitude of what we were giving up to go into the hard science of our choice was not clear until we were far along in our education (think 3-4 year of grad school).
While I agree that people should be able to choose to not have a career to raise a family the fact of the matter is that the hard sciences are losing out because they are so inflexible. They are unable to attract younger brighter Profs. because people either leave the field for industry to make more money and have the ability to have kids or just get out of the workforce entirely to raise a family. In the long run this will hurt us all and treating it a simply as you have is not going to help solve a true problem: the aging of the hard sciences in academia.
Now with all of that said: the policy of departments should be gender neutral so that I can take of time to raise my kids as much as my wife can. There is no reason to make it woman specific.

Thanks, very good point. In general the "hard" sciences nowadays are very competitive and short-term goals oriented: publish, get grants, churn out PhDs, etc. This is by and large leading to conservative science. It is now too risky to spend a few years thinking about a deep problem and come up with tentative answers. Universities want to see large numbers of publications.

Perhaps instead of an "outstanding" career, you could just settle for a "happy" career, and therefore make time for family.

Unfortunately the system (I speak for the life sciences, not sure about the rest) is made so that only the outstanding people get funding. No funding == no work (and no pay, of course). This is what prompts the terrible "publish or perish" syndrome that also causes a lot of bad papers to be published (in bioinformatics, my own field, it's a disturbing trend), aside also lowering the life quality of the people involved.

Also, in my own experience, a part of the higher-ups doesn't have any kind of family, therefore they are actually oblivious to the fact that you may have something going on outside the laboratory. For example, I know of a female colleague who worked exactly sixty days, roughly 12 hours per day, without stopping a single day. And to the person who led her group, it was something perfectly normal to do.

You know, some of us believe in a thing called not being an ass. It's why stores should have wheelchair ramps. Sure, if the disabled guy wasn't disabled he could walk up the steps, but given that he is disabled should we really refuse a reasonable accommodation? We might use your logic to say that slavery is good because being black and being white are not equal starting points. Unless you can clearly state what equality in starting points means your idea of equality is meaningless.

You get the same from many "unequal groups". I tend to avoid the term "minority group" because, by law of nature alone, women are no minority.

Any time someone from an "unequally treated group" gets set back, there is two possible outcomes. Either he sees it as it usually is, simply that he didn't win. Sometimes, though, you get to hear that this must have happened because he belongs to that group. Be it because of his/her gender, race, religion or sexual orientation.

so i say it to you: why not give women, who bear children, special consideration for that?

Nobody is putting a gun to their heads and forcing them to bear children (at least not in the developed world).

In this day and age, in modern culture, having children is purely a choice women make or don't make, knowing full well the career, financial, and lifestyle consequences. These consequences are real, and trying to "make biology fair"--meaning give childbearing women special privileges over non-childbearing wom

Not in the slightest. Feminists want equal pay without making equal sacrifices. Remember that "women make 76 cents for every dollar a man makes" canard? It's based on an hour-per-hour comparison only - ignoring the fact that men put in the majority of overtime, have more experience, and suffer over 90% of workplace deaths and injuries.

Take Xerox for example. When the company was in a tough spot, the CEO didn't have a weekend off for over a year. The CEO was a woman.

Where this trend really starts getting scary is in the field of medicine. While medical schools are trying desperately to accept increasing numbers of women (often more than 50% to compensate for those that don't continue on to practice) many of the women that do finish choose to raise a family during their time of residency (or soon after). This leaves women with less actual medical experience, and generally lowers the overall quality of care.

There is a tradition of enforced medical malpractice, at least in the US, of requiring residents to work 36 plus hour shifts. Kills thousands to millions of patients due to malpractice directly resulting from sleep deprivation. Anything that interferes with the sleep deprivation and its related malpractice is a "reduction in the quality of care". It's 1984 new-speak not the truth, which is why you don't get it. Most licensed day cares are not legally allowed to hold kids for 36+ hour shifts so something has to give, and oddly enough some moms prioritize their kids above their job.

Women do not enter science because they don't like to focus for long periods on one objective at the expense of all others. The like to "multi-task".

Being obsessive about a single concept for years is a male phenomenon, and is pretty essential to leanring/practicing science. Men see this type of focus/obsession as a desirable attribute, women see it as perverted.

As my mother said "Women are not just men with grapefruit up their jumpers". However, this, like reality in general, is not politically correct,

Hm, yes I'd have to agree. I'm always getting that 'You're obsessed.' bit. I plan things out. I organize and focus on one task for a while then I move to another task. I've always seen this as multi-tasking but apparently real multi-tasking means doing a half-dozen things at once and none of them particularly well.

Considering the political and gender correctness of today, it is actually anything but 'duh'. It's quite couragous to dare to say something like this.

It's one of the topics most researchers wouldn't want to touch with a ten foot pole. You may rest assured that this study will be under painfully detailed review and it will be drawn, quartered and hung (along with its maker) should there be the tiniest hint of a mistake. You must see the implications. Employers seeing this might be reluctant to hire a female

"because they want flexibility to raise children or prefer less math-intensive fields of science"

Many tech jobs are great for people who want to work from home and/or have flexible hours, and many women who want to raise kids at home (like my wife) would kill to have those options. So the former sounds like a load of BS, while the latter sounds very accurate. I try just as hard to get my daughter interested in mechanics/electronics/computers as I try with my son, but she won't take an interest in it. She do

Women have different interests for their own reasons. Oddly, "researchers" haven't chosen to simple ASK women about their choices. The very notion that there is discrimination holding women back is nonsense and has been nonsense for a very long time. We've spend decades walking on eggshells trying to man women in the workplace more comfortable as a form of "affirmative action" to what end? A whole lot of hassle and needless tax benefits for "woman/minority owned businesses" and stuff like that? While we are compensating for the choices that people make, let's offer benefits to those who choose a particular religion to follow and whichever is the minority in a region, let's give them special privileges and tax exemptions. Also, let's put all "angry black men" who dress exclusively in "thug wear" into a special social category as well.

I am sure I am offending lots of people and a flamebait is the destiny for this comment, but when it comes to choices that people make, it's time we stop compensating for these people. Religion is a choice. Family or career paths are a choice. How people adapt themselves into society is a choice. Let's stop protecting people from and compensating people for the consequences of their choices. No more tax breaks for churches and religious institutions. No more affirmative actions for women and black people. Let's give TRUE equality a chance and take these societal crutches away. There may have been a need for them in the past, but that need has very likely expired.

So when I choose to work in a dangerous mine, and lose an arm in accident I don't deserve unemployment insurance or to be judged on the same basis as everyone else when I try to get another job because I should face the choices I made. Society doesn't exist so that we can be assholes to one another.

If they had, there would be a post just like yours except that it would be complaining that the women might have given socially acceptable answers instead of what they really thought. People tend to lie about their thoughts and motivations to be accepted by others.

While I understand that there's good political hay to be made out of showing why women are treated unfairly, the whole glass-ceiling (at least insofar as salaries are concerned) thing was debunked years ago when studies on wage gaps corrected for overtime and willingness to travel.

The simple fact is that in most nuclear families, the man is the primary wage earner, the woman the primary caregiver to the children. This is probably based on relatively obvious biological differences (the woman lactates, the m

It's not just women... whichever parent 'takes the hit' to raise the kids runs into this. It's the "kid track" (formerly 'mommy track'). Kids into schoolbus means I'm off to work, rush back before they get home, so less face time and less 'being seen'. It's never about the work.

I've been advised (wisely) to never mention the kids... the other scientists with kids, it's like a secret club where you only talk to other parents least word get out you're soft. In fact, I've been asked by a boss when will my kids be old enough that I can 'get serious about my career' (meaning put them into aftercare so I can work 60+ hours). I have no regrets-- we make a choice, you can't have it all, etc. But it is real-- if you're kid-track, you're not career-track.

Given the salaries in academia/science (medium-low) and that more women (statistically) achieving in the business workplace, more science guys (I predict) will be 'going domestic', so more guys will run into this too.

And while I'm at it, what's with the lame acronomy for Stay At Home Dads, it makes us all sound sahd. Besides, if you work 3/4 time or a rushed 8 hours, you're not staying, you're just at home when K12 is not in session.

I have no kids, but at my office there are a couple of 'At-home Dads', and it's true that the 'kid-track' people in general put (and are expected to put) a lot less time beyond working hours into all of those things that occur mostly outside working hours, like frantically writing crap for last-minute deadlines and attending every conference you can think of/find an excuse and funding to go to. When school's out they disappear for weeks at a time. Somet

I think all these discussions skip over the fundamental fact that women are the only ones biologically capable of bringing a child into the world and the 9 month investment that requires rather than the 9 minute (assuming 8 minutes of foreplay) investment from a man.

Yes there will be women quite entitled to skip the whole process entirely. There will be others who will happily give birth and immediately go back to work leaving someone else at home to look after the child be it a stay at home dad or paid nanny. Many many more will enjoy motherhood and accept the hard work raising a child can be.

Evolution has made it so that women are naturally more bonded to their children and want to look after them and for good reason so the species can propagate.

intrinsic differences in the abilities of men and women were a factor in why there were more male than female sciencists and engineers. [...] differences in commitment in terms of time and flexibility [...] also contributed

The above opinion was deemed sexist [wikipedia.org] enough for the person holding it to resign as Harvard's President in 2005.

But this one:

because they [women] want flexibility to raise children or prefer less math-intensive fields of science.

The problem might be that we have developed a work-life that is inherently incompatible with a decent home life. Maybe women just make a rational choice on different priorities. Not far from the article's suggestion but I'd go further and recommend changing the workplace for everyone.

"Advanced Creation Studies"? WTF is THAT?! The basic class says God did it, the Advanced shows the fossil proof that He did do it?

But creationists say the purpose of their visits to what some describe as "temples to evolution" is to train themselves to think critically, not to pick rhetorical fights with curators or other visitors.

Whatever it is, it's not science. The way I generally describe it is, it's a very long-winded and tedious way of saying "Nuh-uh!" to everything we've learned about biology, geology, astronomy and physics.

That's not true. People just don't want to admit that humans are still animals with the logical urge to keep on creating humans and in order to create humans properly at least one human has to stay home and take care of it.

Due to nature giving the woman all the birth and child caring bits naturally for centuries the woman stayed home. It's something built into humans and to think you can change centuries of instinct with a few bra burnings is silly.

Speaking as a woman who has a successful career in a male dominated environment (not STEM but the military), I can say that it is possible for a woman to rise to the top, if she is willing to make one of two choices (or falls into one of two choices):1. She has no children2. If she has children she has a husband who has a work schedule which allows him to be the one 'on call' for the childrenI've seen many, many female Colonels who were successful with selection two. I've only seen female Generals with selection 1.

OT: From the perspective of lifetime income for the family--military service is bad for males (it reduces their post-service income by 30% when compared to civilian men the same age when they return to civilian life), but good for females. Post military service a woman will outperform women her own age in the civilian market.This then is the simple way to maximize your family income over a lifetime. Woman goes in the service, husband stays in the civilian economy in employment that allows flexibility (lawyer, real estate, contracting, consulting, etc) until the children are able to drive, then both enter the economy as full time employees.

-military service is bad for males (it reduces their post-service income by 30% when compared to civilian men the same age when they return to civilian life)

Two questions spring to mind: first, how does this differ for officers and enlisted men, and secondly, isn't this skewed a bit by the fact that people with lower incomes are more likely to go into the military?

It's also pertinent to ask the questions of how does this include retirement income, is it just people that retire from the military, and can it be attributed to the desire to spend time with their family since they've already completed one career and are more interested in spending time with the families they may have missed until this point. I know several retired officers and enlisted persons who sought careers that would allow them flexibility and/or face time with their families, such as teaching, wit

"Two questions spring to mind: first, how does this differ for officers and enlisted men, and secondly, isn't this skewed a bit by the fact that people with lower incomes are more likely to go into the military?"

I'm a 26-year enlisted retiree and I not only help skew the figures, I've met plenty of other happy retirees who do!

My income at retirement was cut roughly in half to 30K gross/year. This was not tragic because I had many years to plan for it. I don't need to get another job that brings my income ba

Can you really blame them? Women have a fairly short window of only a few decades to have a family. Men have no such limit and can theoretically have children from puberty until death, so there's not as much pressure for us. Besides, people tend to think too much about their careers, IMO. A good job isn't everything. I would rather spend more time with my family than work hard to rise to the top. (in the end, what do you really have with that option? Is your life really going to be better?)

If you want a decent family life for your kid then yes there is a time limit. If you don't care about being old and worthless to your child and him being made fun of because his daddy wears diapers then no, there is no limit.

Who's forcing them to have a family? it is a lifestyle choice - like buying a washing machine or allocating 14 weeks off each year to immerse oneself into Super 14 Rugby.

Have they also thought that maybe females are actually making the choice to have families over having a career? why is it every time there is a feminist jackass who comes out of the wood works that there is this claim that some how if females aren't career oriented and pumping out kids (they choose one or the other instead of doing both) -

Besides, people tend to think too much about their careers, IMO. A good job isn't everything. I would rather spend more time with my family than work hard to rise to the top. (in the end, what do you really have with that option? Is your life really going to be better?)

If you don't have a good job, you won't be spending any time with your family, because you'll be spending all your waking hours working two bad jobs to feed them. On the other hand, once you've risen to top you have guaranteed income and lik

Sounds like you have no idea how to moderate. This doesn't have to be one extreme or the other. For example, I have done tech startups for years. It's 80+ hours a week. It's total stress. It's a constant stream of dealing with problems just to get through the day. All for a pretty good living with a "lottery ticket" (meaning the startup takes off and you get to sell). Now I have 2 kids. As of the first one, I simply took some contract work. Recently I've even take a full time job with a company I u

This is possibility. In my limited observation, I have seen that Women seem more pragmatic than Men. If a woman loves math more than anything, she's still going to do the math and choose a career that pays better or allows other options.

My girlfriend is in Social Work because she couldn't afford Nursing School. I believe that she thought Nursing was high-paying, she's worked in Hospitals enough not to see there's no openings for a Saint. What she's passionate about is Crystal Energy or some New-Age Hoodoo, I try not to talk about it.

My mom was a nurse before she retired. She generally hated it (which is why she didn't bother doing any part-time nursing work after she retired). While she liked working with patients, dealing with hospital management killed it for her. She got injured lifting a grossly obese patient and that was the beginning of the end of her career. Why did she lift a patient she had no business lifting? Because the nurse supervisor ordered it, because the hospital had no orderlies to lift and turn patients like th